Roof Maintenance

Sometimes when I’m sitting around a table with a bunch of friends I start a conversation off by asking, “have you ever heard of designed obsolescence?” and so begins a tirade about how refrigerators and dishwashers are programmed to stop working after 6 years!

But most people don’t really think about it much. They simply, unscrew that light bulb and replace it with another one. But oddly enough, the term’s very roots come from that very light bulb. The first time people learn that light bulbs were designed to fail after 1000 hours (clearly marked on their packaging), they kind of stop and just ponder the statement in disbelief. HUNH?! NO WAY?! SERIOUSLY?!

You mean to say, that the hundreds of light bulbs I replaced in my life time that went straight to the dump could have easily lasted …well…a life time in comparison?! The simple answer is yes…yes they “could” have.

Instead, the manufacturers created a failure mechanism so that they would no longer work after a prescribed period…so they could sell you more light bulbs. Pretty nefarious hunh…

Worse yet, google what toxic chemicals are in some light bulbs, hence, what’s been filling our landfill sites for well over a century…chemicals that have been leaching into our soil and ground water!

How does this apply to the roofing industry? How long will your low slope roofing assets last? How long were they “designed” to last? Would you like to know…more…? Leave a comment below or message me and I’d be happy to give you the RMS answer to these questions and more.

I had a meeting today with Dr. Bruce Firestone…he had some very supportive and complimentary words regarding the Roof Maintenance Solutions approach. He left me with the following quote that sums up RMS’s message and I thought I’d pass it on to the network.

Green roof systems help reduce the “Urban Heat Island Effect”, have storm water retention capabilities, and can extend the service life of the underlying roof membrane by protecting it from some environmental conditions (UV rays, etc…).

But what if your roof wasn’t intended to be green? What happens when a roof has unwanted plant growth?

My older brother was the coolest teenager on our block. He owned a 1973 Dodge Charger, the exact car in this photo. It was an absolute beauty. 120,000 Chargers were sold of that vintage…so why are there so little on the road today?

What we found…

Summer is long gone and even fall is reaching its end. It is time for RMS to look back on the 2013 roof maintenance season. This year we want to highlight a common problem that doesn’t look like much but can cause serious problems for inverted roofs – ballast stones and debris trapped under the insulation.

What we found…

With winter drawing to an end and spring around the corner we can take a look back at the work performed by RMS over the last four months. This has been a harsher winter than we have seen in the past few years with extreme temperature fluctuations and significant snow accumulation resulting in a busy season for our maintenance crews.

What we found…

As the fall season draws to an end and the last of the leaves hit the ground, RMS reflects on the maintenance performed in the past few months. Of particular note, vegetation growth on inverted roof systems was prevalent this year. We removed all kinds of trees this fall — birch, maple and a black locust to name a few.